


Andúnë

by eldritcher



Series: The Heralds of Dusk [17]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 06:53:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4010089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What happened to her?"</p><p>"She flew away, with the sunset."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Andúnë

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. This is the last of the Sunset stories. I hope you enjoyed the AU.

“A story, Grandfather!” Aralótë commanded imperiously, tugging at the tails of his tunic. “A story!” 

The newly crowned King of Aman smiled with amusement. 

The little girl was now at glaring Celeborn with those sparkling blue eyes that she had inherited from a woman whose portraits adorned the palaces of Aman. They had named her Aralótë - the blossom of dawn. She was the first bloom of a new era.

“Quite a handful, is she not?” the new King murmured. “I believe she is glaring at poor Celeborn.”

“Indeed,” Erestor said dryly. “She comes to resemble her foremother more and more with each passing day. Elrond has exhibited considerable wariness in his dealings with her.”

“History.” Thranduil chuckled. “His history with Galadriel must be the reason behind his caution.”

“It is a pity that you and I must sit here, lame and blind, while the rest revel in dances,” he continued after a while.

“We can dance,” Erestor decided impulsively. 

“So we can!” Thranduil said with a reckless laugh that stirred the hearts of those who stood beside him.

Erestor had been deprived of his left leg when he had been trying to save Celebrían from the earthquakes that had ravaged the land on this day a decade ago. The amputation had to be done by Thalion, given Elrond’s stricken state. They had wondered how the loss of the limb might affect one as restless as Erestor was. To their surprise, he had rallied quickly, and often made sport of his disability, saying that he had been forced to incur it merely to ensure Elrond did not bemoan that his famed healing skills were being left to rust in a land where disease, dreams and death did not occur. 

“Rise,” Erestor urged Thranduil now. 

Thranduil complied and steadied his friend with an arm about the latter’s waist before leading them down to the dance floor. 

Nerdanel had made a crutch that Erestor had not been enamoured by. However, he had deigned to suffer a leg-shaped stump that she had made for him. Within a few days of its arrival, he had become admirably skilled at using it as an extension of himself. 

Aralótë liked the rakish air the stump gave her favourite courtier. She would show him off to her friends who came to play with her. Elrond called her biased. It amused others to see Elrond bickering with a young girl with pigtails. Being made a sport of over the matter did not make Elrond relent at all. 

“You!” Elrond now called out, his voice dark with wrath. “Come back! I step away for a moment and the two of you must get to another exploit!”

“Live, Elrond!” Thranduil called out. 

Elrond’s curse was better left unheeded, Thranduil decided, and he relaxed into the music, letting his limbs guide Erestor’s into the slow rhythm. Cries of astonishment and wonder broke the solitary strain of music. That was well worth the occasional misstep of Erestor’s stump upon Thranduil’s toes.

“We must have shocked them,” remarked Thranduil as he leant in to kiss Erestor, well knowing that would bring Elrond to them.

“Then we are all right,” chuckled Erestor, pinching his friend for the liberty taken. “We no longer need the mother hen’s advice.” 

“The mother hen is considering sedating you both,” murmured Elrond, before looping his hand through one each of his friends’ and forming a merry triad. 

Thranduil knew that Elrond’s eyes would be flicking between Erestor and him, and that the noble features would be careworn as Elrond tried to anticipate and prevent each obstacle that might crop up as they moved. Thranduil knew that Erestor’s eyes would be half-lidded as the latter lost himself to the music but Erestor’s hand remained a familiar presence against Thranduil’s spine, a silent token of reassurance just as Thranduil subtly managed to complement Erestor’s missing limb with his strength. The three of them would never admit what they were to each other. They did not have to. It was writ in every word, and glance, and touch. 

“You are thinking, Ernil nîn,” Elrond remarked teasingly.

“Strange as it may sound, I have been occasionally renowned for my thinking,” Thranduil retorted.

“Perhaps you are thinking of building yourself a summer palace near the lands of Aulë,” Erestor picked up. “The very handsome young smith you were ogling might be a target of your regard.”

“Ogling requires eyesight, Erestor,” Thranduil reminded him.

“Not when you are involved,” Elrond said mischievously. “You have been known to ogle with your breath.”

“So speaks the depraved herald who seduced an innocent young prince,” Thranduil muttered.

“I would not have qualified that young prince as innocent,” Elrond said in a suitably scandalised tone. 

Erestor smiled at their bickering and let his eyes rove over the huge chamber. Tapestries bedecked the walls and the ceiling was covered by paintings. Scenes of victory and scenes of happiness. A far cry this chamber was from the austere halls of Finarfin. There were portraits, but they were of a family that had bled away with the last sunset of the old world.

“Would you not agree that I am more handsome than Elrond ever was?” Thranduil was asking him now.

“Bría!” Elrond called her as she passed them in Hórëon’s arms. “A quartet?”

“No!” she called back, her face crinkled by laugh lines. “I have no wish to be addled by the conversation the three of you spawn!”

“You do not know what you are missing,” Thranduil warned her. 

“Trust me, cousin,” she winked. “I certainly do!”

“Women,” Elrond muttered.

“You were the one who called her,” Erestor could not forbear pointing out.

“She deserves better than Hórëon,” Elrond grumbled.

Sometimes, Erestor mused, he could see Maglor’s legendary possessive streak in Elrond. 

 

Ingwë watched his scion and exchanged a proud paternal glance of satisfaction with Thalion. Carnilótë was cheerfully speaking with Celeborn now, occasionally pausing to pat the golden head of the little girl who was now clinging to Celeborn’s robes and watching Elrond suspiciously.

Glorfindel watched wistfully as the three friends caroused on the dance floor, smiles curving their lips and voices rising in merriment. Then the song faded softly and they began laughing outright, their mirth resounding off the walls of the palace. 

“Glorfindel.”

He turned to find Menelwen. 

“Milady,” he greeted her quietly. 

She offered a tentative smile and was awarded by a rough embrace. She stiffened and looked into those eyes she had always thought blue. They were not blue. They held spots of green. They signified the door to a past that she possessed no key to open. 

“I cannot ever understand it, can I?” she asked softly.

His eyes flashed and she saw a trace of the man he had been. 

“I wonder if I will understand it myself,” he murmured. 

 

“You are happier,” Eönwë remarked as he joined Nerdanel on the terrace.

“I am,” she acknowledged quietly. 

“They say that he returned to claim his brother,” Eönwë murmured. 

“They make rumours from ignorance and legends from rumours.”

“What do you think?” Eönwë persisted.

She sighed and met his gaze before saying, “If it were true, then Mairon would have returned to claim what he had hallowed with his fall. Artanis would not have abandoned the Prince of Doriath. Thranduil would not be alone. I cannot believe their claim.”

“You forget something,” he remarked.

She frowned and waited for him to continue.

“Revenant they called the Prince and revenant he called the sun.” 

 

Aralótë possessed a will of adamant. Celeborn was not unused to that. To see the familiar blue eyes gazing at him in pure determination often undid the bare scraps of courage he mustered each morning before meeting his daughter’s child. 

Celebrían had refused to marry Hórëon stating that she liked her life unencumbered by commitments, despite Celeborn’s scandalised reception of the tidings of her pregnancy. Celeborn had tried to convince himself that his daughter was not particularly adept at mothering children out of wedlock. 

Hórëon had been ready to marry. In his way, he loved Celebrían. But Celebrían had remained inflexible and was now raising her child alone. Not alone, Celeborn reflected, they were all been delighted and falling over each other to care for the child. 

 

“I hate sailboats,” said the child as Celeborn carried her and walked down the coastline. 

He had tired of the revelries. Where once he would have caroused and made merry with the rest, now he found that he was incapable of it. He had hoped to find his parents and his aunt at the gathering, for all of the land had congregated there. He had not found them. He frowned. Perhaps he should ask Melian. She would certainly know where they had settled.

The great earthquakes and the shift of the earth’s crust had wrought new shapes for the lands. Aman had shrunken, with large swathes of land disappearing under the sea. The Pelori ranges had fallen into the blue depths. The halls of Mandos in the North and the tower of Nienna in the uttermost west had been devoured by the earthquakes. A huge rift valley lay where once the gardens of Lórien had been. 

The division of lands had been an amicable affair. Thranduil had taken the east. Finarfin had taken the west. The Teleri remained as they had always been, beside the sea they loved. Melian was Queen in Alqualondë at Ulmo’s behest. 

“Story,” the child commanded again.

“There was a man who loved a woman,” Celeborn began. “She was as proud as she was brave, and she was as brave as she was beautiful, and she was as beautiful as she was brilliant.”

“She must be a very special woman,” the child said softly, her blue eyes wide in curiosity.

“That she was.”

Had her eyes been as round and curious when Finarfin had told her stories? Celeborn tore himself with effort from that line of thought.

“What happened to her?” Aralótë demanded with the tenacity that only children could have. 

“She flew away,” he whispered, “with the sunset.”

She had forgiven him everything, for she had known, as she had always known, that the final desertion would be hers. 

“She will come back at sunrise,” said the child sagely, patting her grandfather’s cheek in reassurance.

Thorondor had flown north and seen the end. Maglor’s steel bringing down his cousin, the flames that had burst forth leaving Maglor alone and the ashes that had flown away with the winds. There had been a scream, inchoate and distended, from the gardens of Lórien. Irmo had fallen.

The fires had risen higher and higher, lapping at the stone pedestal on which the statue of the Broideress stood. Maglor had not flinched. His grief-stricken features had transformed into wistful joy as he closed his eyes and let the flames devour him. White had been the flames and they caressed Maglor reverently before drawing him into their embrace. 

Spurred on by the plates moving underneath, the sea rose and the flames died. Now the statue of the Broideress remained a lonely sentinel looking over the waters, her cold grey eyes turned towards the dusk. 

 

 

“How?” Celeborn asked Carnilótë when she joined him. 

Aralótë had run off to inspect a conch. Ulmo’s doing, Celeborn knew. Ulmo liked the child. 

“How can you walk past those paintings and statues? How do you listen to those lays the minstrels sing in their honour?” Celeborn asked his companion again.

“I never look at them,” she replied. “I never listen to the lays.” She met his turmoil-ridden gaze and continued, “I do not need to look upon statues or listen to rimes to remember them. I have breathed the same air as they did. I have argued with them, I have wept with them and I have danced with them. I lived with them.” She examined the faint white circle on her ring finger before saying, “They were painfully alive, every one of them.”

“I am sorry that Prince Maglor was-” Celeborn trailed away.

“I am not,” she said firmly.

“There is nothing in the void,” he whispered. “Nothing.”

“Perhaps,” she conceded. “But I believe in conjurers and their secrets.” 

“We all must have something to believe in,” he said bitterly.

“That sounds like something she would have said,” she remarked. 

He smiled then, and said apologetically, “Cohabitation and its consequences.”

“Quite.”

They watched the girl playing with the conch. She was holding it to her ear and smiling in wonder as she heard the rush of the sea within it. Inside the conch was void. Yet sound emerged from the hollow shell. 

 

 

“It is simply a sunset,” had complained Maglor querulously as he paced. “Why must he drag himself to the fortifications when he is clearly indisposed?”

“Perhaps you should ask him, Macalaurë,” Carnilótë had said patiently. 

“I shall not.” 

“Very well then.”

He had glared at her and then stormed out muttering imprecations under his breath. She burst out laughing and covered her mouth in surprise when the door swung open again.

“Artanis.”

“Where is he?” demanded Galadriel, forgoing pleasantries as was her wont. She reminded Carnilótë of Maglor himself. 

“He left to ask his brother a very important question that may or may not have a direct bearing on why the sky is blue.”

“Spare me your wit,” interjected Galadriel. “Where are they?”

Carnilótë led her to the bowseat and together they stood watching Maglor arguing with his brother by the ramparts of Círdan’s castle. Maedhros was listening with mild amusement and shook his head wryly as Maglor restrained himself from colourful cursing.

“It is hardly worth a relapse,” Maglor said, pointing a long accusing finger at the sun. 

“It reminds me of our family. We burn before the world and weep alone,” Maedhros had murmured.

“I am the poet,” Maglor reminded him.

“Cohabitation and its consequences.” Maedhros affected a sigh.

Silhouetted they stood against the setting sun, blasphemer and idol, and Carnilótë had wondered if the caress of sunbeams upon them was benediction or doom.

 

 

Now Carnilótë stood beside Celeborn and Aralótë, listening to the child’s chatter in a bid to keep herself tied to the present.

“The sun sets,” murmured Celeborn.

“Andúnë!” exclaimed the girl, clutching the conch as if it held the key to every question that ever was asked. “Erestor taught me the word yesterday.”

“Yes, my child,” he agreed quietly. 

Carnilótë smiled and turned away from the glory of dusk, pausing only to cast a last wistful glance at the statue of Míriel Serindë.

 

Celeborn unfurled the yellowing scroll and held it to the candlelight. Written in a cramped, peculiar script - a script that had been mastered by one man’s determination to overcome prejudice - was the line that he read aloud to himself.

 

“A new world awaits us at the end of this journey. A world where the only law would be our conscience. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! Tomorrow will see you and I standing before the dawn and greeting the brave new world which shall be forged from the ashes of our past.” 

 

Underneath the sentence was written another in a hand Celeborn knew well. His shaking fingers brushed the script and he read aloud the words.

 

“I stand on the ridge, staring yearningly at the new world stretched before me. I would live, and live with the man I love. I cannot. I am the last blaze of the setting sun. Yet weep not for me, for I have lived as few dare live. I am what I am - the last herald of dusk. ”

 

Aralótë entered the chamber and Celeborn looked up to see the dawn rays falling down on him.

"Bright!" Aralótë exclaimed.

Celeborn looked down at the parchment he held - the only legacy they had left him - and he spoke quietly the very words another wretched man had uttered long ago.

"I shall not call the sunbeam bright."

* * *


End file.
